


Betting on You

by Xelfi



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dramatic Irony, F/M, Mood Whiplash, Near Death Experience, Profanity, Trust, convenient food based health restoratives, gambling metaphors, hypothetical corpse disposal, the little moment, until the next update at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 10:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xelfi/pseuds/Xelfi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Early on in their game session, Terezi attempts to occupy herself by bothering Karkat.</p>
<p>[Written for Round One of HSO 2012 for Team Karkat<3Terezi, and finally getting around to posting it onymously in celebration of Karezi Day]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Betting on You

**Author's Note:**

> My biggest goal in writing this fic for the HSO was to celebrate both the pairing and the characters, presenting everything I enjoyed about them within the 3K word limit while still having something resembling a plot and also adhering to the 'gambling' prompt. I feel as though I succeeded in all that even though I failed to get past the first round of voting, as I pulled in several comments where people mentioned that while Karkat<3Terezi isn't a pairing they usually ship, they picked up on why other people enjoy it so much thanks to my submission. I really can't think of any compliment that would have flattered me more. Thanks guys! <3

It was an interesting game the two of you played: Karkat, who so obviously hid his secrets in plain sight; and you, egging him on and picking through every piece of information that slipped through his bluff. You knew by now that his hatred was directed mostly toward himself and the anger and false bravado he displayed toward everyone else was firmly rooted in his own insecurities. It was exactly that which made conversation with him so trying; with him playing his cards so close to his chest and reacting vehemently to every curiosity, trolls with less determination would have abandoned the enigma outright. However, you are Terezi Pyrope and you do not give up even when your subject nearly drives you insane! You simply return the favor.

He doesn't quite realize how easily you could have discovered his most conspicuous secret. With his dream self sleeping on a golden moon, vulnerable and locked within some perpetual nightmare, all it would take was a single scratch to solve the mystery. But that would be cheating! And you are not the Scourge Sister who would force down his hand; you are the Scourge Sister who would convince him to reveal it himself! After all, it wasn’t actually the question of his color that intrigued you, but the reason why he chose to hide it in the first place…

Such thoughts were always brought to the forefront of your mind every time you spoke with him over Trollian, but today you had arrived in his land to bother him in person. With a little sleuthing through memos written by his future selves, you believe you're close to the point in time when Karkat had just finished taking care of the latest stab wound courtesy of his troubling but necessary ally, Jack Noir, but you can't be sure he's done with that yet. While surprising him in a bloodied shirtless state would undoubtedly be hilarious, you'd hate to waste the big reveal on anything other than something suitably dramatic! Instead, you took a few extra moments to breath deeply, enjoying the scent of the candy red blood ocean he hated almost to the point of hemophobia. You'd praise it just to spite him if it wasn't already the most delicious color--and what a shame that particular shade was limited to wild beasts, else you'd suspect it was what he hid beneath his skin. Whatever mysterious forces were behind naming him the Knight of _Blood_ and you the _Seer_ of Mind had a very snide sense of humor, after all! Lopah could have been yet another great cosmic joke at Karkat's expense!

Anyway! You're sure that you'd waited long enough, so you step away from the gate that deposited you on one of his many new extraterraneal landing slats and quietly enter his hive, silently maneuvering the maze of blocks until you hear him moving about and muttering various curses. You heard no response so Jack must have returned to his duties on Derse, 'escorted' home by Karkat's irate lusus sprite, conveniently clearing the hive of imps on their way out. You take a deep breath and proceed to kick open the door to his food preparation block, announcing your arrival as obnoxiously as possible. "Hey, Karkat! Did I make it in time to taste your blood?!" You knew he was thorough enough in maintaining his blood anonymity to dress his wounds far from his hive and the range of your viewport, but that wasn't the point. The point was to freak him out as much as you possibly could!

He predictably flips his shit, dropping the box of Grub-Os he had been munching on to offset the symptoms of blood loss, instinctively drawing his sickle as he whirls around to face you--and the gasp of pain tells you more about the severity of the injury than a simple facial expression ever could. He's automatically too far out of breath to manage more than a "Fuck! Terezi!", and then, after you patiently wait for him to inhale properly and put away his weapon, "As if I'd ever slop my fucking fluids anywhere your freakish cartilage nub could pick up the goddamn scent and you fucking know it so don't even fucking bother with your goddamn mind games because being in the mood for that is something I never am and never will be so just skip all the hoofbeastshit and tell me what the fuck you're doing here!"

He had the most bizarre breath capacity for his modest stature! "I came to help you out, of course! I wouldn't be much of a second-in-command if I let our glorious leader expire from yet another suspicious case of friendly stabbing!" You quickly retrieve a box of grubcakes from your Sylladex and toss it toward him before he could start rationalizing the injury, and he grunts again when he had to reach a bit further to catch it than you'd planned. It was hard for you to judge distances sometimes! "My lusus helped me make these--they have extra healing properties!" You sniff out the disbelieving look he shoots toward you even as you can plainly hear him rip open the packaging. "Oh, please, Karkat! We're in the middle of a game and you doubt the existence of convenient food based health restoratives? You'd know all about this sort of thing if you’d ever agreed to FLARP with me!"

"If I ever agreed to FLARP with you," Karkat said, uncaring that he was now talking with his mouth full ("Rude!"), "I'd be dead in a ditch a long time ago, my hideous corpse torn to pieces by only the most pathetic and starving scavengers while the nearby creatures with standards would be unable to look away from the gruesome sight that would haunt their primitive thinkpans so tenaciously that the memory would be carved directly into their genetic code, manifesting as dayterrors in all their unfortunate offspring until the Great Un-fucking-doing."

"Don't be so melodramatic," you chide, grinning widely. "If you died, I would have preserved your body and fed it to Pyralspite when she hatched! Or even better: double prototyped my sprite with your corpse so you'd be a weird half-dragon thing and actually be able to experience how awesome flying is!" It really was a shame that he hadn't woken up on Prospit yet--dragging his unconscious body all over the moon just wasn’t the same without hearing him bitch endlessly about it. "But, seriously, Karkat, consider how boring your life is because you always played it safe. Haven't you ever heard the saying about no risk, no reward?" Vriska would often shout some variant of that as the two of you charged into one dangerous FLARP battle after another. It was different, playing Sgrub alongside Karkat--he advanced with caution, fought defensively, and always kept an eye on you (but was it out of concern, mistrust, or mixed shades of both?) even though it was usually you coming to his rescue rather than vice versa.

He'd been tentatively stretching while you spoke, testing the limits of his mobility post restorative item health boost and finding movement much less painful than expected--but of course he wouldn't mention it. "A perfectly mundane existence was everything I ever wanted and couldn't have thanks to you and the rest of our dipshit friends, which, by the way, reminds me of another applicable quotation about it all being fun and games until somebody loses a glance nugget! And you fuckers kept going! Not to mention all the death and maiming that occurred even during said 'fun and games' before the noted loss of optical capabilities!" He captchalogues the remaining grubcakes with a huff and starts moving toward the exit, fully expecting you to accompany him as he continues to speak, albeit less venomously this time. "Anyway, that conversation has been thoroughly fucked into the ground on numerous occasions already and oddly enough I am not in the mood to ravish it again, so since you're already here and everything, we may as well tackle yet another god-awful sidequest with a nookfull of pancrushing puzzles it gleefully waits to screw us over with."

You laugh perhaps a bit too forcefully, follow, and say, "Ooooh, Mr. Vantas! What a charmer! You know exactly how to talk to a girl!"

Just because you can't see doesn't mean you couldn't feel him staring at you over his shoulder. You can hear him sharply taking in air through his nostrils rather than hissing between teeth, his mouth suddenly shut tight as a steel trap. He's done this several times since Sgrub began, and you're pretty sure it means that he wants to talk to you about something important but doesn’t know how to bring it up. Maybe you could give him an excuse?

"Hey, I have an idea! How about we make a little wager? Whichever one of us kills the miniboss at the end of the quest wins, and the loser has to reveal a secret that they’ve never told anyone else before!" You knew exactly how Karkat would interpret the suggestion.

"I'm not going to tell you my goddamn blood color, Terezi!" So predictable!

======

It takes you a few moments to piece together what happened, but by the time Karkat pulls away and rubs furiously at his face, the proper order of events is not the only puzzle you solved tonight.

You were far too reckless during the boss fight, taking way too many risks to win the upper hand--both in the battle itself and the bet Karkat technically hadn't actually agreed on. You couldn't help it, though. So much was happening all at once and you needed the distraction; the outlet; the space from your newborn dragon sprite's giggled riddles and the strange things materializing in your head. You needed to not be alone with your thoughts.

If you believed in luck, you'd think the universe was out to get you, because right at the critical moment--just when you were deciding when and where to strike the final blow--the Mind Thing happened again and your thinkpan was assaulted with dozens of scenarios simultaneously, overwhelming your senses. You must have frozen where you stood, because what else were you capable of in the moment your thoughts were uprooted from the present and planted into several different futures? Karkat snapped you out of the trace with a shout, but even then you were too shaken and unprepared to deal with the monstrous fist that effortlessly swatted you into the jagged, rocky wall of the dungeon. Suddenly, you were awake on Prospit again, just as still and useless as you'd been a moment ago on Lopah, and you were hit with such a fierce loathing at being denied even the relief of unconsciousness that you stood and bashed your head against the honey scented walls until your remaining senses went dark.

When you woke up again, you had a pounding headache, a back flaring with pain, a curious wet feeling on your face, and a surprising warmth pressed against your lips. Your faculties hadn't quite returned, so you didn't realize until after your attempted vocalization of "What?" ended up more like "Mwah?" that Karkat was kissing you, and your startled and noisy nasal inhalation directly against the skin of his damp--and rapidly flushing--cheek answers all the questions you've ever had about the boy and many more you'd never thought to ask.

He tears himself away, expletives flying, too upset to construct one of his usual uncomfortably elaborate rants as his shirtsleeves went to work absorbing all physical evidence of his distress and color aside from the droplets he'd forgotten on your face. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck, Terezi! You weren't breathing! I thought you were dead! I thought you fucking died! Fucking panfried moron! What the fuck were you even doing?! _Fuck!_ "

It seemed Karkat knew more about the game than you thought, having performed the resurrection kiss (or maybe simply a clumsy attempt at a lifebreathing technique?) even though you hadn't actually expired. It also seemed that Karkat was a much better player and general survivor than you'd given him credit for, finishing off the boss ogre on his own and evading every threat on his life that Alternia had prepared just for abnormalities like him emerging from the brooding caverns. You remember wanting nothing more than to discover his blood color just for the challenge of it--for the thrill of breaking him down--but now that you had been serendipitously been dealt the proverbial royal flush, instead of calling out his every bluff and destroying him absolutely, all you wanted to do was fold and discard your hand. It was never a game to him; it was always his life on the line, and every interaction was an all-or-nothing gamble.

Yet he played all the same, knowing exactly who you were: the aspiring legislacerator and avid FLARPer; the single most threatening troll to his wellbeing that he associated with. You were the one who studied and upheld the law that would demand a mutant's death and the fighter who chased down lawbreakers and miscreants for execution. He must have thought that if he could handle you, he could survive anything the universe could throw at him. However, judging by his reaction to your assumed death, at some point, rather than simply continuing on flirting with disaster, Karkat had fallen ass-backwards into actual emotional investment. He cared. He cared about every single one of you, and with that being such an alien concept to trollkind, he buried every hint of it beneath his ornery attitude; both it and the color filling your nostrils with the intoxicating scent of ripe cherries.

With Karkat still caught in the throes of his freakout, you surreptitiously raise one hand to your cheek, wincing as the movement pulls at the cuts and scrapes dotting your back, and sweep his misplaced tears into your mouth, your tongue curling in delight at the taste. Even diluted, his special, one-of-a-kind flavor overpowered the regular salty tang. You're unable to contain a breathy sigh, which catches the boy's attention and is likely misinterpreted as a pained moan, because he snaps out of his now impotent adrenaline rush and retrieves the grubcakes you'd given him earlier, tearing one into smaller pieces and shoving them one by one into your mouth with shaky hands. It's a shame that they didn't taste nearly as good as he did, but you couldn't complain about the lessening pain. You start to pull yourself up from the ground and he helps you into a sitting position, leaving the box between you and kneeling close by. How quickly he forgot his skin temperature was telling of his abnormally warm blood! But if there was ever a time to reveal what you knew, it wouldn't be while you were unsure of how much he trusted you after he had proven beyond any measure of doubt that he could be counted on to the point of putting himself at risk for your sake.

Still, it didn’t seem fair, so you say, "I lost the bet, didn't I? I owe you a secret, now."

He seems exasperated, drained from the events still fresh in his mind, but also faintly curious in the tone of his response. "I never agreed to the terms."

You smile, one with a little less teeth than usual. "I came to visit you because I didn't want to be alone today and everyone else was already busy. I've been having a hard time adjusting to my Seer powers--you saw that for yourself. I'm sorry for freaking you out back there. And for bothering you all evening. But thanks for being worried and helping me anyway."

He's silent for a long while, but you can practically hear the words forming in his mind, being rejected and rearranged before he finally settles on "You can bother me anytime, Terezi."

The distance between you is short. You disguise your movement by reaching for the grubcakes, which you captchalogue to avoid suspicion, so he doesn't expect your continued advance or your lips mashing against his nose. You were aiming for his mouth, but you can taste his flushed skin just the same! He sputters and you stand, laughing giddily with teal tinted cheeks, and say, "By the way, Karkat, since you never agreed to the terms but didn't stop me from paying up anyway, now you owe me one of your secrets!"

"Hoofbeastshit!" he hollers back as he rises up to join you, but immediately loses his bluster, turning away from you. "…I'll tell you when I'm damn well ready."

"Is that a promise?" you ask, and his response is the sharp edge of his scowl. Good enough for you! "Then it's about time we head off to collect this cleared dungeon's reward, don't you think?" You turn and start toward a previously hidden corridor with a much lighter laugh than usual, picking up the boss's dropped grist that Karkat had ignored in favor of rushing to your side, and you're glad for your heightened senses because even with your sightless eyes turned away, you can smell a much softer expression forming on his face from behind you as he follows your lead. It's probably a line straight out of one of his cheesy romcoms, but you hope that someday soon he'd be able to trust you enough to risk telling you everything, because from this point forward, you were betting solely on him to get you--all of you--through this game session in one piece.

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes about this fic;
> 
> 1\. Terezi; I've often felt that she's a lot more troubled than she lets on, and doesn't know how to deal with herself when she's feeling upset or insecure so she ends up going out of her way to distract herself. In canon, the best example of this would be how she's been playing with Dave and the Mayor in Can Town instead of dealing with her complicated feelings about Vriska (and probably also Karkat). In this fic, she spends an undisclosed amount of time looking through memos to time out the best moment to scare the crap out of Karkat because his reaction would be both entertaining and distracting. Kanaya said that the roles they were given were probably meant to challenge them, and I wanted to showcase Terezi having trouble with hers while also dealing with not having someone she's able to talk to about her problems. She probably tried talking to her lusus-sprite, first, of course, but I can't imagine she was all that helpful considering she's likely less than a week old at this point and also compelled to speak in riddles due to the game programming. This lead to me splitting the fic into two distinct parts/scenes; the first, in which Terezi's issues are hidden entirely with only small hints suggesting otherwise, and then the second, where her problems are suddenly in full, honest view.
> 
> 2\. Karkat; I don't have as much to say about him since Terezi pretty much has him completely figured out in the narration, but there is one key thing that she missed entirely; he noticed that she's been acting a little strange lately and just doesn't know how to bring it up. He's also half-convinced that he's just imagining that her laughter/behavior seems a little forced, and is extra wary about revealing his concern if that's the case.
> 
> 3\. Gambling; I honored the HSO prompt both literally and metaphorically, but I also threw in a more subtle connection with 'trust', which can be synonymous with 'gamble on'. As in "I'll trust/gamble on you", which is actually where the title is derived from. By the end of this fic, Terezi's decided that she trusts Karkat absolutely, and she wants him to trust her just as much before she reveals that she knows his secret. Considering how relaxed Karkat seems in their infamous <3 chat when compared to their earlier conversations, she definitely achieved that goal.
> 
> 4\. Quadrants; since I did write this as a part of Team Karkat **< 3**Terezi, I did focus on flushed interaction, but I did nod towards canon by hinting at their future problems with quadrant vacillation. Terezi in the first scene can be seen as a girl pursuing black romance, and in the second scene, there are also hints of pale romance (eg. Karkat ranting about how Terezi put herself in a dangerous situation). If the maximum wordcount had been a little higher, I would have attempted a pinch of ashen romance between them and Jack Noir too, but alas, it was not to be.
> 
> 5\. Finally, I just wanted to say that Terezi totally did that thing where the girl kisses the boy and then runs off blushing and giggling. She was just far more sneaky about it so nobody would notice. Until I told you just now, anyway. ^_~


End file.
